Author Archives: mseeliger

We need to hear from you!

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Hi everyone,

Greetings from the Stony Brook MSTP. We are in year 47 of the program and have been continuously NIH-funded for 27 years – going into the renewal application this year, we are really hoping not to break that trend!

I hope that you are all doing very well. I’m writing with the request to ask you to take a few minutes and complete this survey for the MSTP – the data in it will help us with the renewal application (NIH loves outcomes data and asks for more of it each time…). It’s very nice to have new buildings and all (check out the new SBU Cancer Center and Children’s Hospital buildings, opening this fall!) – but what NIH (and we) really care about the quality of training and our long-term outcomes, which is why we really need your responses.

To complete the survey, please click here or follow the link at the bottom of this email. Knowing how busy all of you are, I’d be grateful if you would do it quickly before it gets lost in a sea of other email. We have kept it as short as possible to minimize the burden on your time.

Where we are: The program has grown since most of you graduated – there are now about 60-65 students in the program (retreat photo above), and their accomplishments and recent match outcomes are terrific. One of our very successful alumni came back for a visit and remarked, after seeing the credentials of our incoming students (typically 95% on the MCAT, GPA 3.8, averaging 2-3 publications from undergrad / postbac research efforts), “I’d never be accepted these days!” – which, given the terrific success of that former student, makes us very hopeful for the current crop of trainees. We have great support from the school (about $1.5-2M investment per year from the Dean’s office), and assistance from scores of faculty. See https://medicine.stonybrookmedicine.edu/mstp for details (some of the web site needs updating, admittedly). We also have a new facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/StonyBrookMSTP/.

Finally, we also received an AAMC Education Innovation Award last year for the MSTP classes taken in conjunction with the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, which was started at SBU but has now visited many campuses. New this year, an Alda center curriculum designer and a gender communication researcher are creating a workshop for female students in the MSTP on communication approaches, to complement other, more broad-based training in implicit bias that all students are being exposed to.

With best wishes,

Mike Frohman

Director, SBU MSTP

Markus Seeliger, Paul Fisher, Maurizio Del Poeta, Richard Lin, Helen Hsieh, and Carine Maurer

Associate Directors

 

You can open the survey in your web browser by clicking this link or if the above link doesn’t work, try copying the link below into your web browser: https://goo.gl/forms/Bp0p68wKEEsIuH8u1

Featured MSTP Student – Rachel Kery

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Rachel Kery has developed a technology that will allow her to study for the first time how failure of adult born neuronal integration underlies diseases such as PTSD, epilepsy and major depressive disorder.

A technology developed by Rachel together with her graduate supervisor Dr. Shaoyu Ge allows her to investigate the process and the functional consequences of how adult born neurons integrate into already existing circuits. With this innovative technology and its application, Rachel applied recently for a prestigious fellowship from the National Institutes of Mental Health. Importantly, Rachel turned around her previous application into an application not only with an excellent and fundable score, but she literally received a perfect score. Dr. Michael Frohman, MSTP director, praises Rachel for her perseverance and hard work when the initial application received a less favorable review. Dr. Role, Rachel’s co-mentor echoes this statement: “She is very careful, extremely well read and an impressive example of how “perseverance furthers”. She really dug in and got the drafts to her advisors well before the deadline so she had ample time to respond– which she certainly did with aplomb!”

Only two brain areas produce new neurons throughout adult life and disruption of adult neurogenesis in these regions occurs in a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders such as major depressive disorder, post traumatic stress disorder and epilepsy. While the integration of new neurons is important for healthy brain function, little is known about how they integrate into existing circuits and how this process affect brain activity. Rachel’s novel functional labeling system is uniquely positioned to answer these pressing questions.

Rachel’s long standing interest in neuroscience goes back to her award winning psychology experiments in the basement of her home in rural Maryland as a high school student. In her undergraduate years, Rachel started to work on adult neurogenesis in crustaceans while studying Neuroscience and Anthropology at Wellesley College. Rachel continued to develop her science background after graduation, spending two years as a laboratory technician in Dr. Anne Klibaniski’s lab at Massachusetts General Hospital. Rachel joined the MSTP at Stony Brook in 2014 to combined her interests in research with her passion for child neurology and psychiatry. Dr. Ge, commends Rachel’s sharp eye for detail and her ability to ask very thoughtful questions evidenced by Rachel’s strong track record of productivity with a total of 5 research publications, including two papers co-authored with fellow MD/PhD student, Greg Kirschen.

Rachel is a strong proponent for women in science, and she is credited with spearheading mentoring meetings for women within MSTP together with Dr. Stella Tsirka. In addition to being an ace neuroscientist, Rachel competes in pub trivia quizzes where her specialties are history, geography and literature in addition to science and medicine.